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Gamasutra published a string of articles covering the sessions in the PR for Games Conference held in San Francisco nearly two weeks ago. One of those sessions Gamasutra wrote about was a panel on blogging called “New Avenues for Reaching your Audience” and it was one that I would have liked to go see if I had time, since I talk to a lot of bloggers pretty often and obviously, in a way, I am one. This is more about blogging more in the professional sense anyhow.

The article is pretty good, as I think blogging and bloggers are still at a point where people don’t know what to think or do with them in some cases, which is something that the article goes into detail. I think the important point and key differentiator — and one of the reasons I do like them in addition to more traditional media — is that blogs serve both as news aggregators and original content generators all while having unique, opionated perspectives. As Chris Kholer points out near the end of the article, sometimes this, along with wanting to post things with as much celerity as possible, can backfire a little. Be sure to check the article out.

A weekly summary of what is being talked about quite a bit in the gaming community.

Earth Defense Force X

The official website for Earth Defense Force X opened this week in Japan and not without people noticing — NeoGAF was all about the upcoming Xbox 360 title and TeamXbox picked up some screens too. As pretty much a sequel to Earth Defense Force 2, a budget title from D3 Publisher and Sandlot for PlayStation 2, it will hopefully get published here in the United States. Basically the game is protecting earth while killing huge ants, spiders, centipedes, robots and what not, in a fully destructible enviornment while alien ships, that you can shoot too, hover above dropping more of these on you. How does that not sound like a fun game?

Pink and Black come to the US

After rumors started circulating, Nintendo announced this week that the pink and black versions of the Nintendo DS Lite, , previously available only in Japan and Europe, would be on sale in the U.S. on September 13. While the U.S. still doesn’t have the enamel navy or ice blue versions, at least black seemed to be one of the more coveted versions on the boards when it was announced, leading to at least quite a few imports I’m sure.

Leipizig Games Convention: FIFA 07 and Pro Evolution Soccer

As part of a briefing at the 2006 Games Convention at Leipzig, Microsoft announced that the next-generation versions of EA’s FIFA 07 and Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 6 would only be available on the Xbox 360 this holiday — and even the next twelve months. This was huge news for Europe, probably the biggest market for these soccer games, and a firestorm of a debate ignited about the reasons, significance and implications of this news on NeoGAF. Pro Evolution Soccer producer Shingo Takatsuka stated otherwise in a 1Up interview, completely reigniting the debate on NeoGAF and on TeamXbox. Whatever the details end up to be and what fans of either platform say, Xbox 360 is going to be where the biggest soccer market in the world is going to have to play their favorite game anytime in the near future.

Lost Planet at the 2006 Games Convention

At the Games Convention this week, Capcom showed off some great looking new screenshots of Lost Planet and the first peek ever at multiplayer gameplay. Joystiq compiled the videos into one handy post so you can see how Fox Hunt and Post Grab modes play out. There’s a reason this game is so anticipated and the demo on Xbox Live, all the screenshots released and now these videos show exactly what that reason is — the game looks and plays incredible. Coming off of the success of Dead Rising (the thread on NeoGAF has over 52,200 views!), Capcom is really showing off its goods on the Xbox 360.

Penny Arcade Expo

Over in nearby Bellevue, WA, the guys at Penny Arcade are putting on their annual expo, PAX. Bigger than ever and looking to keep getting bigger especially after the demise of E3 as we know it, PAX is all about games — video, tabletop and pen and paper. John over at Gamerscore blog has been constantly keeping a Flickr gallery filled with photos from the expo. Don’t forget to check out the events and concerts on top of the games. Because of what I do, I think “The Role of the Community and PR in the Game Industry” (with Frankie from Bungie) and “Blogphotopodcasting: New Media in the Game Industry” (with Brian from Kotaku) are pretty interesting panels to check out — don’t toss them any softballs if you ask them a question. Joystiq and Kotaku are blogging live from PAX all weekend.

Contact

The official website for the upcoming Atlus game, Contact, went live this week. The website did reveal some unfortunate news — the release date was pushed back to October from a mid-September release. This game, from the content of it’s gameplay to details like the Livejournal-style manual in the English version, has been highly recommended by message board posters in Japan.

Last week was THE week. As in the week where all of the work I do more or less culminates in a one week-long event I wrote about last month which includes the actual show days of E3. Here is what happened. Finally.

Pre-show
The first two days of the week before E3 started revolved around press briefings/conferences, both Microsoft’s and those of their direct competitors. Monday was Sony’s press conference and, well, it was surprising. Otherwise, we were all just getting ready for our own press briefing over at Grauman’s Chinese Theater followed by a reception at the nearby Roosevelt Hotel to take place the next day. I also picked up my E3 Exhibitor badge on Monday. On Tuesday we were all at our places in a dome just next to Grauman’s Chinese Theater waiting for the onslaught of journalists to come check-in once the Nintendo briefing (video podcast) let out. Stephen (right) and Anthony (left) from Xbox Addict, Michael from Next Level Gaming (in white) and Cornelis from Xbox Users Group (in blue) were all already waiting in line. I was in charge of making sure the people I work with could get into the briefing, in the event that they weren’t on the master list or didn’t have their passes to get in. Although hundreds of people showed up, everybody did their best to get everyone inside as quickly as possible. And just like that, all of sudden nearly everybody had disappeared, because Microsoft’s E3 press briefing (video: high) was starting. The highlights (video: high | low) of the press briefing are also on Xbox.com. While everyone was waiting for the briefing to be over, we went to get ready for the reception at the Roosevelt Hotel across the street.

At the Roosevelt, the pool and the front lobby or reception area was converted for the reception and there were Xbox 360 consoles and LCD flat panels everywhere running just about every game coming out there is. From a whole bank of consoles showing upcoming Xbox Live Arcade titles like Contra, Galaga, Pac-Man and Lumines Live, to a mini-theater to watch Gears of War being demoed to small rooms around the pool where journalists could demo Too Human, Mass Effect, Blue Dragon, Viva Pinata and more. I didn’t quite expect what that was going to turn into once over a thousand people from the press briefing came in and filled the place — it was so empty and peaceful for an hour. It was quiet enough that I saw Tomonobu Itagaki come up to the entrance to the event with some of his staff and milled around for a while at our extremely imposing sign that said the pool was closed for a private event. Then just about an hour and a half after the briefing started, the floodgates opened and the hotel was packed in an instant. Although I had to run back and forth to Grauman’s Chinese Theater to help some of my contacts get into the Roosevelt, I managed to meet a couple more of the people I work with quite a bit but have never had the pleasure of meeting: Jonas from DailyGame.net and Howard from PopCultureShock. I also ran into Amadeo from Amped IGO right at the tail end of the reception. After that, it was time to to some normal work, head out to dinner with our team and then get to bed early for the mayhem that the three days of E3 were supposed to be.

E3 show days
When you work the show, your days start early — mine were 8 AM or 8:30 AM early. The show floor opens at 9 AM and therefore you can expect people to show up at the booth right around then. So you had to be there and be ready for the onslaught by then. At least on the first day, at 9 AM, the floor opened only to a select group of media that had early access instead of everyone with a badge, but that didn’t stop it from starting the week in the most hectic fashion as those of us handling the appointments and escorting media to their appointments had rushes of people to help every hour and half-hour every day of the show. In between those times, we were helping anybody who was running late, answering questions from anyone who walked up and networking with colleagues and journalists whom you’ve worked with. Every single day rushed by faster than I could have thought and every single hour was spent on my feet although by the end of the day and the show, my feet were nowhere near as bad as I thought it would have been.

What really impressed me about the show, not having been to a “real” trade show in my life, is the sheer enormity and production behind each company’s booth. Activision had a full half-pipe built in their booth space. The Microsoft booth (video: high | low) was huge and the meeting rooms were a full two floors. I can’t imagine that they could build that whole thing, so solidly and look and work so well, in the relatively short timespan that they did.

On Wednesday night, we held our C3@E3 party (video: high | low) where we invited a reasonably large number of bloggers, community, Xbox MVPs and some journalists. Over 400 people showed up around 7 PM that night waiting to get let into the show floor after hours. We had arranged to get the people who came to our party to get onto the floor and over to our booth when the South Hall was pretty much devoid of people. We were finally all set at 7:30 PM, after everybody had calmly waited for the booth to be ready and in one huge group, the security guys and I led them in. Peter Moore kicked things off and then, for just about everybody, it was down to socializing and playing games. I had a good long conversation with BuddyC, Vark, some of Vark’s programmer buddies at Bethesda and TekunoRobby for a good part of the party. Again I didn’t even get to see much of the games being played, but the conversations we were having were worth it. I also met Chris, who works at Wideload with a bunch of ex-Bungie guys in Chicago and who worked on the Stubbs the Zombie game. Nicole Hamlett and her staff were pretty easy to pick out with their yellow TenTonHammer jerseys, so mark yet another person I work with that I finally met. The event was over far too quick and I still didn’t get too see too many of the games in our booth in action but it was really great to hear everybody walk out and talk about how much they enjoyed our event. It was nice.

For the entire show, I never got the opportunity to visit the Community/Blogger Bus that was parked outside of the West Hall for all three days. Even the Washington Post wrote about the bus and bloggers at E³. Next time I’ll have to make sure to drop by so I don’t find myself writing about E³ over a week later still. I would have a had a better chance to really meet the writers from Joystiq and Kotaku rather than the minor contact I had when they showed up for their appointments.

During the week, I was also staffing a room where press were invited to see both Blue Dragon and Ninety-Nine Nights. This was the first I saw of Blue Dragon beyond the trailer that has been presented several times. I got to see the opening scene and sequence and a couple of in-game scenarios. I’m looking forward to see how this shapes up by the time it gets released, but it’s definitely very ambitious which is always a good sign. In the afternoon was Ninety-Nine Nights and I was treated to the fact that Tetsuya Mizuguchi was helping with the presentation of his title, Ninety-Nine Nights for the three sessions I staffed. Although I had met Mizuguchi-san before, it was really interesting to hear him talk about his new title, he was really into the story. On top of that, the Phantagram developer that was there demonstrating the game even said he is not as good as Mizuguchi-san!

By the end of the show, I was tired, sweaty and my feet did hurt. I got a quick chance to walk around the South and West Halls and see some of the games out from the various developers and publishers. E³ turned out to be not as bad and deafening as everyone I had talked to made it out to be. It was still hard work, it was still hectic, but I didn’t spend time wishing for it to end. By the time it did end, I was ready to crash.

Links to videos and photos courtesy of Nintendo, Microsoft, Xbox.com, TeamXbox, Gamespot, GamersReports, Derek Bauer Photography and the Gamerscore blog.

Something pretty cool happened as part of the work I do with Microsoft on Xbox 360 (and of course, Microsoft Games Studios). One of the pieces of what I do, but really run by someone else at my job, involves maintaining relationships with bloggers large and not so large. As my introduction on Xbox.com and in posts on some of the message boards I work on, I get to know a lot of regular gamers and, especially in the case of NeoGAF, a few developers and journalists. Obviously we invite them to things like the San Francisco event we had in March and we’re doing a few things at E3 this year as well. One of the things we recognized at these events is that it has always been logistically difficult to provide Internet access to everyone that needs it to complete some sort of online communication, from journalists to bloggers to people on the message boards. This was especially true back in October 2005 when I attended an event in New York where all sorts of journalists came to preview the launch window game titles for the first time and, at night, we had PMS Clan members and message board members coming by to play and hang out. It would have been nice to give all of them some ability to go online.

Going into our planning for E3, we recognized the need for these very same contacts and friends of ours to have ready access to the Internet. As John Porcaro over on the Microsoft side of things explains on the Gamerscore Blog, determining and getting approval on where we could put aside some physical space to let people hook up to the Internet. We couldn’t put it anywhere in or near the Microsoft booth, there just wasn’t room left, nor did we want to take some place that was out of the way — even if it was available. After much talking amongst ourselves and with the E3 staff, we got ourselves a nice big parking spot right out front of the Los Angeles Convention Center (Windows Live Local version and Google Maps version). Not only that, but the bus is this huge coach which will be conveniently wrapped in Xbox 360 branding. Of course, if you’ve been playing attention to the maps linked earlier, the bus just happens to be right in the route many people will take to head to the West Hall when going to check out Sony’s and Nintendo’s respective booths. Hopefully the bus will serve to distract them a just little.

My schedule has not been finalized yet, but I will be spending some time in and near the bus over the full three days of E3. Ask for me if you happen to drop by, I would be more than happy to meet you.

More details on who will be there, who is invited and how to find out if you can get invited to the bus at the aforementioned Gamerscore Blog.

I am now officially registered, booked and reserved for my first E³ ever, to start in just under a month. I will arrive in LA early on Monday morning, probably too early considering what the rest of the week is going to entail. I don’t know yet what I’m doing on Monday, I’m sure it involves set-up, planning and rehearsal. As many people know, Sony’s press briefing has been scheduled for Monday afternoon. I’m sure many of us will expectantly wait to see what announcements should must be made: price, further timing on the worldwide launch, HDD-inclusion, controller design, online features, etc. It is definitely going to be one heck of an evening afterwards.

Tuesday morning is Nintendo’s briefing, to be held at the famed Kodak Theater, where we can expect a lot more news about the Virtual Console, their big franchises and whatever creatively disruptive things they have cooking up Iwata-san and Miyamoto-san’s sleeves. As soon as the Nintendo briefing is over, most everyone will be headed over to Grauman’s Chinese Theater, which is just a stone’s throw away, for the Microsoft briefing. It took me a while to realize that this was THE Chinese Theater we see and hear about when some movies premiere in Los Angeles. Wow. I’m really not as free to speculate about what the Microsoft announcements will be (since I already pretty much know them) as I can about Sony and Nintendo, but I’m sure it will be all that everyone seems to expect and more.

Wednesday the show starts and so will the absolutely chaotic mayhem, judging from some show floor pictures of E³ 2005 and being told that the floor is pretty much constantly like that throughout the show. Commit me if you have to, but I think this is going to be a great time for a guy like me. I don’t remember what my schedule and responsibilities are for each day, obviously I will be busier than I will probably ever be in my life. There will be a couple of “parties” that I will attend (or at least try to) from the looks of it. I say “parties” because they aren’t really the type of party where you just go to have fun and let off steam. In one way or another they will be related to networking, getting to know other folks in various parts of the industry, getting to meet people I talk to often face to face and generally networking. I mean, it will be fun, but again, not entirely super party time.

I also hope that I can find enough time to walk the floor and adequately check everything out. Partly out of curiosity of course, but I’m really interested in being able to see what’s coming down the pipe for publishers across all platforms, including PC. It will be like being a kid in a candy store. Depending on the level of announcements, it will be interesting to see how far Sony and Nintendo are coming along on their first party titles — in the case of the latter company, there hasn’t been much being said or shown. I can’t even begin to think about what from multi-platform and 360 exclusive publishers I want to see. A lot of it is stuff Microsoft Game Studios is publishing anyway — the Japanese titles. The one thing I do know for certain, is that whatever I see, I know I’ll see enough that it’s going to mortally injure my pocketbook this year. And I can’t wait!

E³ 2005 show photos courtesy of the E3Expo.com Media Archive.

The last couple of days I have split between San Francisco and San Jose. In San Francisco, I went to an event on Tuesday night we put together with the Xbox team that was held at the Supper Club. The entire club past the bar at the entrance was turned into one big gaming and mingling room. There was a white and green DJ booth in the center of the room and what seemed like queen mattresses next to each other were completely lined again three of the four walls in the room to make lounging areas on both the ground floor and on the upper floor. They all had Xbox 360s and screens breaking up the lounging areas, and a few more on the floor itself. As best as I can remember, the following games were set up there:

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
Burnout Revenge
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Tomb Raider: Legend
Top Spin 2
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
Saint’s Row
Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting
Texas Hold ‘Em Poker
Dead Rising
Ninety-Nine Nights
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2
Sonic Riders
Over the Hedge

This is a bit different than the initial list of games I had seen, but still far from a disappointing turnout. The titles on display was sweetened even more so when a couple people from Capcom came by just minutes before the event started to deliver the most recent build of Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting.

Anyway, the event was great and I was really glad to meet some people I had only corresponded with on e-mail, or occasionally on the phone. Of course, as I had mentioned before, I was also looking forward to meeting Splincir and ludcrouspeed again. I spent a while, probably far too long, talking to TekunoRobby and Vark from GAF there too. They will not have heard the last from me, that’s for sure!

The next morning (at 6:30 AM no less) I hopped into a car with some coworkers and Peter Moore to bring him to a breakfast we were hosting in San Jose with guys from Joystiq, GamingSteve, Kotaku, Gizmodo and GamerAndy. This was the first time I met most of these guys, as working with bloggers is someone else’s area at work. I think the breakfast went well and lots of interesting things were discussed, but I’ll let the bloggers at the table post or podcast about it. One of the guys I work with, John Porcaro, posted pictures of the breakfast at Gamerscore Blog, the Xbox marketing team blog.

Mere hours after the breakfast was over, I was on a plane headed back to Seattle ending my whirlwind two city tour.
Update:
Here are some links to posts or podcasts from the guys who went to the breakfast.
Joystiq
GamingSteve
Kotaku
GamerAndy and his impressions from the showcase are here
Gamerscore

Later today I’ll be flying heading down to San Francisco for a work event that’s part of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) that runs this week in San Jose. The event that we’re hosting together with Microsoft will be in San Francisco tonight and it’s titled as a “Showcase” event.

Back in early October 2005 we had a similar set of events, one in New York and one in San Francisco, which allowed us to put a bunch of people in one room, give them the rundown on the new Xbox Live and the Dashboard and set them loose to play a good number of games on preview. This event is something pretty similar, in fact the New York component of the event happened late last week already.

I’m looking forward to it as I’ll get to meet a few editors and writers of websites I haven’t met in person yet, a couple people from GAF (TekunoRobby and Chittagong) and a couple people I’ve met before from the TeamXbox and GameSpot forums (ludcrouspeed and Splincr). Frankly, it’s nice to put a face to someone I’ve talked to online for a while now.

Either way, the event will probably be pretty fun, meeting people and getting to play some preview games — especially if the list of anticipated preview builds I saw late last month turns out to be accurate. As always, I’ll be taking pictures both for work and personal purposes, so I’ll put some up on here when I get a chance.

Also, I should be able to drop by the EB Games by my work to pick up Me & My Katamari and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion this morning before I head to the airport. Oblivion will have to wait, but I’ll have some Katamari fun (R.I.P. Katamari Damacy website) if I manage to stay awake on the plane.